


And The World Moves On

by EvilGenius



Category: Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: All I can write is angst, Angst, Because Senku was literally alone and awake in sensory deprivation for 3700 years so, Character Study, Counting Fic, Gen, Hurt Ishigami Senkuu, Hurt No Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, Introspection, Ishigami Senkuu Needs a Hug, Isolation, LET SENKU CRY YOU COWARDS, Loneliness, My First Work in This Fandom, My poor leek baby, No manga spoilers because I'm not caught up, Poetic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad, Senku deserves the world and he carries the world on his shoulders, Sensory Deprivation, Taiju is there for a bit but not a whole lot, and consequential sensory overload, did you know sensory deprivation is actually a form of torture?, or so i hope, why is that not a tag?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:13:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28472199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilGenius/pseuds/EvilGenius
Summary: 3,700 years.116,763,100,000 seconds.The numbers are all Senku has.OR: A deeper look into the effects of spending several thousand years in complete and utter isolation.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 77





	And The World Moves On

**Author's Note:**

> So I just binged all 24 episodes of Dr. STONE and I am literally in love with Senku, which I have a feeling is a common sentiment among many Dr. STONE fans. It was a wonderful show with so many great moments, both happy and sad, and the backstory of Byakuya and Ishigami village was one of my favorite parts. And oh boy, it spoke to the angsty fanfiction writer in me.
> 
> I mean, we have Senku, who has spent 3700 years in total isolation, is separated from the world he once knew, and the most important person in his life- his adoptive father, who gave him the gift of science- is long dead. And what's more is that as the leader, Senku doesn't even has time to grieve! He sheds one tear and then it's back to strong, brave-faced Senku, and it makes me so sad, because he's just a _teenager_. He's a kid who's gone through too much- been alone for too long- and is now faced with an insurmountable task while also bearing an incredible amount of grief. I've only watched the anime and haven't read the manga, but I feel like he never gets the break and the emotional release he deserves.
> 
> So, voila. Senku angst. Wheee!

All is dark when Senku wakes.

_One._

His vision is black and he is surrounded by dead air. A vacuum, his mind supplies- _is this what a coma is like?_ He remembers a brilliant flash of green and he replays that moment over and over in his head, analyzing and overanalyzing and picking apart the data he has gathered so far. It is not nearly enough to bring him to any sort of conclusion.

He begins to count.

_Two. Three. Four._

He does not know how long he will stay like this. He does not know anything of the outside world. He does not know if he will ever wake up. But Senku has never been one to leave things to chance. _When_ he has the chance to gather more data, he will need an accurate estimation of the time, and he knows he will need this to occupy himself. It is as much for the sake of his own sanity as it is for anything else.

_Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine._

He thinks of Taiju and Yuzuriha. Are they alright? Has the same thing happened to them? He thinks of Byakuya- miles above in the vast expanse of space. Has this strange affliction reached him too? He knows it is illogical to worry about things he cannot change, has no way of knowing, but the thoughts cross his mind all the same. Now there is nothing to do but think. Think, and plan.

He must wake in spring.

_Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen._

All is dark. He cannot see, hear, smell, touch, taste. He counts, and the world moves on.

* * *

_Seven hundred thousand, nine hundred and eighty-nine._

Days have passed. Senku knows this as he knows that time is an abstract concept born of society. Decades, years, months, days: they were all paltry inventions to give humanity a way of framing themselves. Living one lifetime seems like an eternity, beyond true comprehension; living one decade, year, month, day at a time becomes infinitely more understandable. Right now such things are meaningless to him. Senku lives in seconds, hundreds and thousands and millions and numbers too big for the human mind to properly conceptualize, growing until they become meaningless, and Senku longs for the stars.

He counts. He goes over the periodic table. He recites the constellations to himself. _Andromeda, Antlia, Apus, Aquarius, Aquila, Ara, Aries._ He thinks of a day where he can see them with his own eyes once again, stargaze perhaps from among the constellations themselves, see them through the lens of _space_ instead of the lens of a telescope that now only lives on in his increasingly fuzzy memories. He memorizes faces. Names. Taiju. Yuzuriha. _Einstein. Curie. Fermi. Archimedes, Newton, Maxwell, Taiju, Yuzuriha, Tesla, Faraday-_

He feels nothing. Neither hunger nor thirst, neither heat nor cold.

_Seven hundred thousand, nine hundred and ninety-three._

_Cold._ The absence of heat.

This, to be sure, is a place of absences.

_Seven hundred thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five. Seven hundred thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven._

He loses his place. Frustration dimly registers. He pushes it away and finds his place again. It is tedious work, but he will not stop. He cannot stop.

_Seven hundred thousand, nine hundred and-_

And then he can't think and something is ebbing away at him, tugging, tugging, _ripping_ his consciousness apart like dunes of sand caught in high tide and telling him to rest, to _sleep-_

_"I want to go to space."_

He does not sleep.

The tug pulls and pulls and he resists. He knows that the darkness will consume him the second he gives in, and even faced with this pitiful existence, Senku finds he does not want to die. He cannot stop for a moment, and so he counts. He counts louder, louder, louder to fill the silence and static and roiling blackness he is surrounded by. _Do not sleep. Do not sleep. Do not sleep_. If he closes his eyes now, he knows he will never open them again. He has no tangible body, but everything hurts. _Hurtshurtshurtshurtshurts-_

The tug recedes, and he has no body but he exhales deeply anyway.

* * *

_Fourteen billion, four hundred and seventy-three million, eight hundred thousand, nine hundred and twenty-one._

Senku is tired of counting.

He is tired, tired, tired. _He must wake in spring. Archimedes, Galileo, Cassieopia, Centaurus, Cepheus, Taiju, Yuzuriha._ Faces grow frustratingly out of focus, scraps of memory he desperately tries to hold onto as they turn to dust in his hands. There is too much to remember, two million years of human history to retain and restore and retake, and not enough room for unnecessary things. 

He forgets the taste of the ramen he'd eat with Byakuya. The cadences of Yuzuriha's voice are fading away from his recollection. He counts. He does not stop counting. 

_Fourteen billion, four hundred and seventy-three million, eight hundred thousand, nine hundred and twenty-four._

It is so, so dark. Senku misses light. He remembers a balmy June day when he'd launched a rocket with Taiju, the warm sunshine on his face and the breeze kind and gentle, carrying his hopes and dreams high into the sky. Taiju had cheered like a madman as the childish construction (that they'd made, _together_ ) cleared the treeline.

_Fourteen billion, four hundred and seventy-three million, eight hundred thousand, nine hundred and twenty-six._

The tug is back. He resists. He counts. Is this all his life will ever be?

Outside of Senku's small field of awareness, buildings fall. Cities crumble. The sounds and sights of civilization are long gone; now there is only an all-consuming, unnatural quiet, the simple and total absence of life. Tall, moss-covered structures reach for a blank and neverending sky. There is no wind to stir the rotting wreckage of what was once a civilization; fear, horror, and humanity crystallize into stone, into a town of ghosts with wide eyes and cold, unmoving bodies. For once, the world is silent.

Not that would Senku would know. He sleeps, unaware among the deafening nothingness, years broken into hundreds of millions of seconds. He cannot move. He cannot blink. He cannot breathe. It's all he can do to think, to keep counting, to not surrender to that all too familiar tug telling him to rest, sleep, give up, it would be _so easy,_ all he has to do is close his eyes and he wouldn't have to count anymore-

_"I want to go to space."_

He is tired. He does not rest; he does not wake. He simply continues to exist. 

_Fourteen billion, four hundred and seventy-three million, eight hundred thousand, nine hundred and thirty-two._

He could not stop if he wanted to. _The numbers will not stop._

* * *

Senku wakes for a second time, and all is _light._

Sunlight is all he can see, too hot and too harsh and too bright in the singular ruby eye that is now exposed to the world. He hears cracking noises like gunshots in his ears (too loud too loud too loud after eons of silence it hurts) and a weight is lifted off his chest and he is free.

Everything hits him at once.

Color. Shapes. Sounds of all volumes and pitches. Smells, earth and rich soil, the sharpness of the air, the itching of pebbles against his bare skin, moss and dirt particles shifting beneath him, bird calls, _his breath rattling in his lungs and his own heartbeat roaring in his ears, overwhelming too loud stop-_

So he does what he does best. He counts.

He does the math. Keeps the counter going in his head as he adds up the figures, converts them into more understandable formats, forgotten concepts, _human_ concepts. 116,763,100,000 seconds. 32,434,200 hours. 1,351,425 days. 44,400 months. _3,700 years._

Humanity has slumbered for millennia.

His hands begin to shake and he ignores it in favor of taking stock of his situation. Trembling palms reach slowly, oh so slowly, for a singular fragment of stone now broken on the ground (stone that had been on his skin moments ago, trapping him in the vast expanse of _**space** this wasn't what he'd wanted-_). Maybe it is for the best that he is so overwhelmed, because his brain is soaking in all the details of his surroundings, data, information, trajectories he files away for when his skull doesn't feel like it's about to implode. For the first time in thousands of years, Senku takes a step forward.

He falls.

He is pitching forward, the air is rushing too fast around him and the ground is hard and solid and painful. The smell of dirt fills his nose. Cicadas chirp in the distance- or is that the ringing of his ears? S _o much for one small step for man,_ he thinks wryly to himself. _If I can't manage this much, how can I ever make the giant leap for mankind?_

He has read enough scientific journals to understand what he is currently experiencing, but humanity would never be helped if he lies here feeling sorry for himself. So he gets up again, ignoring the sharp pain of rocks digging into his feet. His legs are weak and wobbly, and the world is spinning around him. He walks forward anyway. 

_One step._

He stumbles. Nausea builds in his gut.

_Two steps._

He places a steadying hand on a tree only to jerk it back with a hiss at the simple feeling of rough bark against his palm. The lump in his throat grows. Pathetic. He walks forward faster, faster, faster.

_Three steps. Four. Five. Six._

Everything is a dreamlike blur of green and grey, lush foliage and people forever frozen in time, faces morphed in terror. The world is too loud and too silent. The ambiance of the jungle, the buzzing of insects and screeches of animals and the chirping of crickets at night, is too much; and yet it's not enough, still missing something, the constant hum of streetlights and traffic and conversation.

People. The world is missing people. They are all around him, but in this still unfamiliar stone world, Senku is alone. 

But he isn't lonely. 

_Seven steps. Eight, nine, ten steps. Fourteen billion, four hundred and seventy-three million, eight hundred and forty-four thousand, one hundred and thirty-two. Fourteen billion, four hundred and seventy-three million, eight hundred and forty-four thousand, one hundred and thirty-three-_

He has the numbers to keep him company, after all.

* * *

April 1st, 5738. According to his math, this is the current date. It is also the message he carves into a tree as soon as the idea of holding a tool in his hands doesn't make him lightheaded.

When anyone asks him why he did such a thing, he will say it was to record the first day of a new era of humanity. The Stone Age, 2.0; the dawn of the Kingdom of Science. A glorious new world in the making. 

Really, it was for those nights before Ishigami Village when he found himself awake and wandering, unmoored, desperate for any sort of sign in the darkness that he was alive. That any of this was _real._

He knows what sensory deprivation does to people. He'd read all about it. Hallucinations, delusions- painfully vivid- products of a desperate mind trying to fill in the empty spaces of its reality because it needed something, _anything_ to latch onto. What if this was all some elaborate fantasy he'd constructed for himself? Just a pretty lie, to keep him blissfully ignorant to the truth of his body floating in that senseless numbing void _(nothing existed he felt nothing ~~he was nothing~~ nothing)?_

(If it was an illusion, did he really want to break it?)

He was never sure how he always managed to find the tree in his stupor, but his legs seemed to instinctively know where to go on those nights, carrying him through jungles and graveyards of stone corpses and the screeches of monkeys until he was kneeling. Always in the same place. Always looking up at a patch of bark illuminated by pale moonlight. And he would place his palm over the writing etched there, carved with a tentative and shaking hand, allowing himself to feel the indents of the wood and remember what he had been thinking as he had made them.

For all the times his mind had been hailed as brilliant, there had been precious little running through it at that very moment: _what a cruel April Fools' joke this all makes._

Senku can no longer visit the tree from Ishigami village. The trip is too far, and Tsukasa's armies pose too much of a threat. His only landmark in the world is many miles away, and as foolish as it is to develop such a trivial attachment, he finds himself missing it. Now, on those nights where the sky is too dark and the blankets too suffocating and the air too thick and prickly in his throat, it is all he can do to dig his nails into his palms and count.

He cannot stop counting. He will not let the darkness consume him. He will not.

(Maybe that's why the first thing he makes with electricity is a light bulb.)

* * *

Senku is not lonely before he revives Taiju. His body is weak with hunger and exhaustion, his senses overwhelmed, his smirk a little more wobbly than usual (a show of confidence that no one is around to see), but he is not lonely. (Humans are social creatures, he knows, and he isn't any different no matter how he tries to deny it.)

_Fourteen billion, four hundred and eighty-nine million, six hundred and twenty-three thousand, one hundred and fifty-four. Fourteen billion, four hundred and eighty-nine million, six hundred and twenty-three thousand, one hundred and fifty-six._

The numbers are a constant rhythm in his skull, droning on and on in the back of his mind, the one constant he has had for thousands of years. He wants to look to the stars for comfort, but he has promised himself that he won't do so until Taiju is revived. Until _someone_ is revived. For such a noisy place, it always seems so quiet, except for the numbers.

_Fourteen billion, four hundred and eighty-nine million, six hundred and twenty-three thousand, one hundred and fifty-eight._

He hates the numbers sometimes.

(All the time.)

He plots and wonders and survives for 15,778,800 agonizing seconds. ( _Six months,_ he has to remind himself, _it has been six months and not second after second after grueling, hellish second-_ ) His days are spent in a sort of feverish haze as he works, making preparations for a reunion that may never come. He establishes a routine. Every morning he checks on Taiju, ignoring how illogical it is to waste his scarce amounts of energy on something that didn't need to be done daily. He hunts. He crafts and learns and lights fires and practices speaking aloud at night even though his own voice grates on his ears, pushing past the soreness in his vocal cords. He gets hurt. He treats his own wounds and depends on his own luck to stave off infections. He fails to catch food (can't stomach the overpowering rawness of the flavors, it's too stimulating, too much) and spends days and nights either heaving or lying deathly still, so hungry he can scarcely move, listening to the deafening sounds of rustling trees and wind and labored breathing.

He survives. He counts. He does not stop counting. The numbers echo louder in his mind as the sun sets, linger in his ears for a little longer each morning. He continues to count. The world moves on.

Taiju wakes up.

_Fourteen billion, four hundred and eighty-nine million, six hundred and twenty-three thousand, one hundred and seventy-five._

And Senku wonders. He looks and he wonders, would his friend understand? Is Taiju ever kept up late into the night by the incessant numbers _counting counting counting_ in the back of his mind, the sheer _enormity_ of what they are trying to attempt? Seven billion lives, the fate of humanity, held in the hands of a child who loved the stars too much-

Senku wonders, but then he looks into Taiju's eyes, bright and trusting, filled with nothing but hope, and he already knows the answer. Taiju has never been a thinker. For once Senku is glad for it.

He continues to count alone. The numbers are all he needs, even if he hates that he needs them. All that matters is that Taiju is here, and safe, and ready to help kickstart humanity. Senku's blood runs cold every time he loses sight of Taiju for even a fraction of a second, but it is enough. It has to be enough. 

That night, for the first time in ~~fourteen billion, four hundred and eighty-nine million, six hundred and forty-four thousand, seven hundred and fifteen seconds~~ over 3,700 years, Senku looks up.

The stars are wrong.

Senku is ashamed of himself for not realizing sooner. With the constant movement of the earth after all this time, of course the constellations would have moved. The change is not immediately visible to most- maybe a normal person wouldn't even notice it- but Senku notices. He knows. The sky he sees now is not his sky, not the sky he explored with Byakuya, not the sky he grew to love, not the sky he wanted to see. This is a sick mockery of the sky in his memories. Stars, lines, patterns, ever so slightly off-kilter, but never able to be fixed.

Even if all seven billion humans were saved, they could never turn back all of those years and years wasted. They could never get their sky back. This strange and jilted starscape would always hover over them as a reminder, forever a symbol of what the world had lost, what it would never be able to regain. Depetrification always left a mark.

That night, as Taiju sleeps peacefully and obliviously inside the hut, breaths heavy and slow, as the crickets chirp and the not-constellations twinkle with more clarity than they had in millennia-

-for the first time in a time far longer than 3,700 years, Ishigami Senku cries.

And the world moves on.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write this in a more introspective and dreamlike style than my usual; it was definitely a step out of my comfort zone, but it was fun, and I'm actually very proud of the final product. I got really sad working on the final part. Please tell me what you think! Comments make me happy. <3


End file.
